Odd and ends...I'm packing for Hawaii and am trying to pick WHICH books to pack, which to carry on the plane with me and in what order to proceed. Now, due to some inexplicable reasons, my love affair with "stories" has become a love/hate sorta thing. First of all, I took my greatest passion (literature...words) and made it my career. While that is a fantabulous blessing, and I pinch myself most mornings to make sure I'm not dreaming...it has changed me. I have not been able to "relax" with a book in years. AND in those years, something else has happened. My soul has become very sensitive...sensitive to violence...to suffering. Me, a child raised on Stephen King, no longer able to stomach the horror genre that kept me up many a night, breathlessly turning pages. While I am grateful that horror now repulses my spirit...what the heck do I read for FUN and excitement? Then there's the purity issue. I'm single now. The rules for romance have changed...purity of heart and mind are now a major consideration. No books with sex...at least not outright SEX...suggested "tension" is welcome, however...Jane Austen style. What's a girl to do?

This is my list...with the help of my dearest Amy, I've decided to read the first page of each one. The page that captures my heart will be carried on the plane with me. The others are riding in cargo. For your curiosity...I'll include the first LINE of each:

1. Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler--Maggie and Ira Moran had to go to a funeral in Deer Lick, Pennsylvania.

2. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut--Call me Jonah.

3. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut--All this happened, more or less.

4. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez--It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.

5. Murder on the Leviathan by Boris Akunin--For reasons unknown the household staff were gathered in the pantry, which is located on the ground floor of the mansion to the left of the entrance hall.

6. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte--There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.

7. Big Fish by Daniel Wallace--On one of our last car trips, near the end of my father's life as a man, we stopped by a river, and we took a walk to its banks, where we sat in the shade of an old oak tree.

I know, unlikely I'll make it through all. But come on now, really, can anyone else not get over the opening line for #4??? Whew....